Yarrrrrr, Talent! Arrrrrr!

 

A week ago Saturday, September 19 was “International Talk Like a Pirate Day.” I generally try to observe ITLP Day, owing to its historic linguistic roots, its sense of whimsy, and the implied license to engage in truly memorable exchanges with my wife (“Avast, me darlin’, you’d best be stealin’ some more ale for me and me maties.” “Stop talking like that, or I will kill you.” “Don’t you mean ‘keel-haul’?”).
During this time it occurred to me that the profession of pirating must have been quite the crucible for determining talent in the areas of seafaring, thievery, combat ability, and willingness to mangle the English language. Merriam-Webster Online defines “talent” as “a special ability that allows someone to do something well.” (1) So, in all our legitimate businesses’ project teams, the truly talented members are instantly recognized as such, and placed in positions where their special abilities will significantly enhance the overall teams’ ability to attain scope on-time, on-budget, right?

I’m not saying that that never happens, but it is pretty darn rare. As I discuss in my upcoming book The Unavoidable Hierarchy, the human factors that are naturally arrayed against any organization establishing and maintaining a pure meritocracy are many and varied. An abbreviated list includes:
•    Cronyism,
•    Nepotism,
•    Relative physical attractiveness of the, shall we say, non-optimal talent,
•    Ubiquitous and/or oleaginous displays of fealty to the upper ranks of the owning organization from the aforementioned non-optimal talent,
•    Manipulation of the project team’s internal narrative to mis-assign the team’s failures to its talent, and successes to the ones doing the manipulating,
•    …all the way down to a talented employee reminds the owning organization’s Human Resources Director of her daughter’s ne’er do well, pirate-like boyfriend.
With these factors (among many others) in play, it’s a near certainty that pure meritocracies, if they ever see the light of day at all, are relatively short-lived animals.

So, what’s the truly talented but truly frustrated project team member to do? Well, there is actually a certain dynamic in-play that helps the underappreciated but talented employee: if their owning organizations are to stay competitive with others in their business environment, they simply must outperform such competition, and that involves putting your best talent in a position to use their special abilities to bring their projects in on-time, on-budget. This trade-off implies that, while true meritocracies are rare and tend to be short-lived, their business pathology-ridden counterparts, while common, tend to be the first to be overtaken by units of the Royal Navy and sent to Davy Jones’ locker.

In-between we have most organizations, which maintain some survivable balance between meritocracy and upper management’s mascots receiving the lion’s share of promotions, recognition, and loot. If you find yourself on-board one such organization, how do you get ahead, if the avenues for demonstrating your superior abilities are limited, and rarely recognized? There are generally two options:
•    Engage in demonstrated acts of loyalty to the command structure, in an attempt to become a mascot, or
•    Find a different ship, and leave the underappreciating one to its fate.
If the latter of these two choices appears overly harsh or abrupt, consider that, should you attempt the former and be found out to be less than sincere, the typical remedy that they will employ will be to have you walk the plank.
 

  1 Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/talent on September 26, 2015, at 13:27 MDT.